World Champion

7062012

If you read my introductory post a few months back, you would know that I am not the sportiest person in the world but am more than willing to get in there and have a go. With the Olympics coming up soon, that got me thinking.

Why do will still keep official medal tallies? I got nothing wrong with handing out medals, if you’re in the top three in the world at what you do, good for you! But let’s be honest, we all pretty much know who’s going to end up on top.

Probably these guys

I say this because I love a good underdog story (I go for the Cronulla Sharks so of course I do. 45 years and counting. Come on Boys!) And who doesn’t? I always get more enjoyment out of watching someone who you’ve never heard of trumping the ‘champion’.

So many people nowadays seemingly have heritage and bloodlines from multiple countries, and I have no problem with this, but when it gives you the chance to choose who you want to represent in sports, I think it’s a bit unfair. This belief may also stem from something that I hold close to my heart: State Of Origin.

It only happens three times a year

Over the years there have been many players for Queensland that are not actually from Queensland but claim dual eligibility. This came to light in recent times with the short ditty ‘That’s In Queensland’. This made me think about it on a bigger scale because I am eligible to represent many countries (if I was athletic enough). I could be Australian, Scottish, English possibly even German (as my dad was born there). So I have a pleasure that not everyone would.

Not only this, when watching the Olympics, we just want to be able to watch the best of the best, and that’s exactly what we get to do; so does it really matter where they are from? I had a thought the other day that went a little something like this: instead of having the participants walking around at the opening ceremony with their fellow countrymen and women, why not have them walk around with those who they will be competing against? So we’ll see all the shot-putters in a different group to the high jumpers. This means that we would then be able to appreciate the builds of the different participants that we’re going to be watching over the next fortnight.

This is where my idea gets a bit radical though. Scrap the national anthems. We all have favourite songs right? And we all love blaring them as loud as we can don’t we? Well, when someone gets gold, why not play their favourite song and encourage them to break out a few moves instead? Imagine the spectacle that would come with Usain Bolt dancing to the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Got a Feeling’.

I gotta feelin’ (I’m going to run a sub-10 tonight)

Also, we now live in the age of multiculturalism where many people emigrate from country to country but still hold onto values from where they originally left. These days it is neigh on impossible to describe a typical Australian without excluding some minority group in society, and for these reasons I think that a few changes wouldn’t go astray.